Intelligencer

“ Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? ”

“ The doctrine had been continually gaining ground, either per incuriam, or by design, that the senses were to some extent intellectual, were capable of cognition, or were competent to place intelligible data before the mind. But if sense can act as intellect, what is the use of intellect—why any intellect at all? If sense can intelligently apprehend anything, why can it not intelligently apprehend everything? Let man diligently cultivate his senses, and his advances in knowledge shall be immense. ”

“ Such do I see Intelligence in those who possess it; such do I feel it, on some delightful occasions, in myself. Such also I frequently notice it failing to make itself agreeable to some kinds of persons. Those who take a just pride in Reason or Logic are often a little ruffled; or else, as Wagner said of Mozart, they find Intelligence just a little frivol. But in the long run they recognize an ally; and their conscious superiority makes them indulgent. ”

“ It was so in my training. We seek to silence all opinions, all half-truths, all thinking, in fact, in order to Know. We postulate, of course, a center of Spontaneous Knowledge, or Genius, above the mind. ”

“ How could we, by these reasonings, to Intelligence reduce our soul which recognizes that it is the image of Intelligence, which considers its life a faithful imitation of the life of Intelligence, which thinks that, when it thinks, it assumes an intellectual and divine form? ”

“ Intelligence turns to whichever side the light comes from, adjusting itself, in discursive, often desultory fashion, to all manner of directions and distances, comparing and measuring with unabashed slovenliness, extracting the qualities which strike it and hastening on to connect them with something it was struck by before. Being thus rapidly responsive, Intelligence may often, I admit, seem on the pounce, and more so than politeness warrants. ”

“ Intelligence works by experience, and is wholly dependent on individual experience for the wisdom of its actions.—Wisdom in this case is a product of two factors, intelligence and individual experience. ”

“ How knowledge becomes possible for any intelligence, is in fact the problem how are we to think, under one of its aspects, the relation between individual consciousness and the wider sphere of reality? ”

“ So, if you feel that you are afflicted with more than ordinary intelligence, and especially if you are plain with it, hide your brains, cramp your mind, study to appear unintellectual--it is your only chance. ”

“ In respect to the Soul, Intelligence plays the part that the First plays in respect to Intelligence; Intelligence sheds its light on the Soul, and, to determine her, rationalizes her by communicating that of which itself is the trace. ”

“ No less admirable are, on the one hand, his synthetic skill and the logic of his arguments, and, on the other, his subtle and discriminating analyses, which weigh the finest shades of thought and dissect each subject with all the accuracy of science. ”

“ Seen by the mental eye of Intelligence, which, like the bodily one, moves in every direction and focuses to all distances, thereby informing us of the proportions and relations of whatever is not ourself, and following step by step the actions which are not our own. ”

“ There is quite enough to be done in the way of selection, assimilation and elimination (since all understanding means that) without setting such Intelligence as we have to play scavenger to wasteful or slatternly genius.... And yet, and yet.... May not those trashinesses of genius, and the scavengering entailed thereby, be that which secures to Intelligence its highest activities, and in so far fulfils one of Genius’s chief missions? For, after [55] all, Intelligence is the living, changing mass of unprofessional thought, the averaged, habitual thought of the majority of us. ”

“ Are there men of intelligence in the nations? Yes, as to the world's intelligence—as to the intelligence associated with the arts and sciences, natural philosophy, and mechanism, they are as intelligent as any that can be found, without God. ”

“ But, having once heard a person reading from a book, written, as he said, by Anaxagoras, and which said that it is intelligence that sets in order and is the cause of all things, I was delighted with this cause, and it appeared to me in a manner to be well that intelligence should be the cause of all things, and I considered with myself, if this is so, that the regulating intelligence orders all things, and disposes each in such way as will be best for it. ”

“ But that which par excellence is termed knowledge, bears the impress of judgment and reason, in the exercise of which there will be rational cognitions alone, applying purely to objects of thought, and resulting from the bare energy of the soul. ”

“ But for the “Common People,” the average intelligent student, for whom Science and the pursuit of Knowledge is not a Profession, but a desire to know, and to understand, in order to be able to use wisely and well, it is of far less importance to know what others think or believe, deny or affirm, on the subject of Psychology, than to realize what are the faculties, capacities, and powers of their own souls. ”

“ It is not the optic nerve alone that gives the knowledge of surrounding objects to the mind, but it is that which God has placed in man—a system of intelligence that attracts knowledge, as light cleaves to light, intelligence to intelligence, and truth to truth. ”

“ And if, reflecting on this all-pervasive character of the Intelligible and of Intelligence, we formulate certain 'Laws of Thought', we are condensing into isolated judgements truth for which there is overwhelming evidence. Such judgements are 'indubitable'; for an intelligent doubt presupposes knowledge, and any and every knowledge inevitably, confirms them. ”

“ Before he could form any idea of anything, before he would express his opinion on any subject, he must know it in origin and history, in substance and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his subject inside and outside, upside and downside. ”

“ Are they not rife with all the useful reasoning—the philosophic intelligence—the happiness of application, that cultivated man could devise for the assistance of untutored intellect?
From the logic of the sage we learn, by a spirit of imitation natural to human beings, to quicken our own powers of reasoning. The perspicuity of arrangement and expression, so admirable in our master, becomes gradually a part of our own style. ”

“ In vain, we shall be told, you claim to go beyond intelligence: how can you do that except by intelligence? All that is clear in your consciousness is intelligence. You are inside your own thought; you cannot get out of it. Say, if you like, that the intellect is capable of progress, that it will see more and more clearly into a greater and greater number of things ”

“ Think of the mental quality of a world in which each day the thought and research of a great host of intelligences turns more and more the opaque and confused riddles of yesteryear into transparent lucidity. ”

“ To make this clear, it is necessary to define intelligence a little more closely, so as to discover the mental habits which it requires. For this purpose I shall consider only the aptitude for acquiring knowledge, not the store of actual knowledge which might legitimately be included in the definition of intelligence. ”

“ Certain it is that these two positions go together in the ordinary books upon psychology. Matter, or its qualities at least, are held to be cognisable per se, and the senses are held to be, in their own way, a sort of cognitive power—a kind of intellect. But if the senses are a sort of intellect, what sort of intellect is intellect? If the senses execute the office of the intellect, what function has the intellect to perform? If the senses are promoted into the place of the intellect, the intellect must go elsewhere—it must "move on." ”

“ On this fundamental point, see lecture 3, in this vol.—2d Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 97. "The peculiarity of intelligence is not the power of knowing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is there intelligence for us? It is not enough that there should be in us a principle of intelligence; this principle must be developed and exercised, and take itself as the object of its intelligence. The necessary condition of intelligence is consciousness—that is to say, difference. ”

“ And does the intelligence consist, in degree or in kind, in nothing but a repetition of the same experiences as those through which his progenitors were carried, or is there a something in him to which his individual experiences contribute the mental food by which the mind is nourished and by the assimilation of which its individual intellectual growth becomes possible? ”

“ It means the difference that exists between the lower intellect called the intellect of power, either possible or passive, which is uncertain, multifarious, and multiform, and the higher intellect, which, perhaps, is like that which is said by the Peripatetics to be the lowest of the intelligences, and which exerts an immediate influence over all the individuals of the human species, and is called the active and acting intellect. ”

“ They have the foundation, and they can improve and add knowledge to knowledge, wisdom to wisdom, light to light, and intelligence to intelligence. This power to increase in wisdom and intelligence so that we can know things for ourselves is within every one of us. ”

“ Since he who rises to the contemplation of the intelligible world, and who conceives the beauty of true intelligence, can also, as we have pointed out, by intuition grasp the superior Principle,203 the Father of Intelligence, let us, so far as our strength allows us, try to understand and explain to ourselves how it is possible to contemplate the beauty of Intelligence and of the intelligible world. ”

“ Gradually the thinker is led on from the first naive position of intelligence to the conclusion that the whole varied contents of external experience are nothing and can be nothing but Vorstellungen, determined modes of intelligence. ”

“ Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation. ”

“ The sum total of all intellectual excellence is good sense and method. When these have passed into the instinctive readiness of habit, when the wheel revolves so rapidly that we cannot see it revolve at all, then we call the combination genius. But in all modes alike, and in all professions, the two sole component parts, even of genius, are good sense and method.—Coleridge, June, 1814, Mem. ”

“ The answer lies in the fact that the technique of intelligence is to be found precisely in the details of the operations of nature and of human conduct from which an aristocratic intelligence is always in large measure shut off. Intelligence cannot operate fruitfully in a vacuum. ”

“ Here we have an excellent example of how the average intellect, qualified for the highest triumphs in practical sense-knowledge, sets itself up, in naive pride, as a judge in domains, the existence of which it does not even care to know. ”

“ Are literary productions and the acquisition of laurels reliable tests of intelligence? Is this man a doctor because he is more intelligent, and that man a hospital attendant because he is less intelligent? ”

“ But this discovery when once made marks the birth of intelligence; and with its birth comes the responsibility of the mature to observe, to recall, to forecast. Every moral life has its radicalism; but this radical factor does not find its full expression in direct action but in the courage of intelligence to go deeper than either tradition or immediate impulse goes. To the study of intelligence in action we now turn our attention. ”

“ By another power or faculty of Intelligence (mind) it can perceive, as connected with the things that sense perceives, something that cannot be taken in by sense perception; that is to say, Intelligence can generalize. ”

“ You thus perceive that the question regarding our competency to attain to absolute truth resolves itself into the new question, Is there in the mind of man a universal part—that is, a part which in all intelligences is essentially of the same character? Intelligence itself seems to constrain us to answer this question in the affirmative. ”

“ Thus in the constant effort to acquire and elaborate ideas and preserve knowledge of things as necessary to its own preservation and higher development, the Self is working intellectually. Are we to say, then, that Intellect is the supreme function of mind, and that the Self is essentially Intellect—considering the other functions to be merely contributory? ”

“ But all these sense data, as we may call them, come to us without exertion or activity on our part; it is the intellect which gives them meaning, which interprets them, which makes them the apprehension or awareness of objects or things. And the active part that the intellect plays is also a process of selection. This is evident if we reflect upon the universal form which our intellectual activity takes, namely, attention. It is in the act of attention that we are conscious of mental activity, and attention is essentially selection—the selection of an interest. ”